“If you only knew how clever you are!” I said to my daughter, as she lamented her inability to pass her times-tables weekly test.

If you only knew, that the difference of intelligence between the smartest, most precocious Year 6 kid in your school, or even the smartest teacher in your school, and the “least capable”, least advanced, “slowest” learner in the nursery class… if you only knew that that whole difference between them, is like just one drop of water in an ocean.

One small drop in the vast, unfathomed ocean of the basic innate intelligence we are all born with as human beings.

I would even say, the difference between the biggest dunderhead that ever lived, and Einstein or Marie Curie or Bach, these imposing genius figures of history, is really only a tiny fraction of an enormous whole, like a grain of sand compared to a whole planet, when compared to the innate intelligence the dunderhead character possesses.

Really.

No matter how incredibly idiotic and slow-witted you think you are, or you believe somebody else to be, you, or that person, are millions of times more intelligent than the most intelligent robot that has yet been built by the most brilliant minds working in robotics.

Seriously. Without a shadow of a doubt. Not even close.

I’ll go further and say that even Harry, our pet hamster, is many millions of times more intelligent than any robot ever made. And I have no idea what goes on in his mind – I am just looking at what his body and his instincts allow him to do so effortlessly, and without having been taught.

So, don’t put yourself down. And please, don’t worry that your “relative” lack of agility in learning, or ability to retain information, when you compare yourself to other people in your class, is going to mean that you can’t really achieve very much.

Really, I can’t emphasise enough how untrue it is.

I know, we hear this so much at school, and from well-meaning adults (present company included, I do apologise) who wish us to apply ourselves in the pursuit of exam success.

You are – as we all are – just my virtue of being a living mammal, let alone a social mammal, a primate, a human, a Homo Sapiens Sapiens in the 21st Century – you are an absolutely incredible achievement of nature. You are an absolutely astonishingly intelligent living being – and you would still be so, even if you had never learnt to speak, or walk, or play games or music, let alone all the facts and methods and interactive skills you have already learnt at school and elsewhere.

As the great pedagogic genius Dr Shin’ichi Suzuki often exclaimed with delight to his bemused friends, “All Japanese children speak Japanese, isn’t that just amazing?”

Yes, it is. The fact that some other person speaks two, or three, or even eleven languages, does not in any way diminish the absolutely remarkable*, mind-blowing achievement of your having learnt one language – the language we are communicating with right now. (*It did take an absolute genius to bother to remark upon it. That’s the nature of genius.)

We do not notice the vast part of our intelligence. The relative sizes of recognised vs unrecognised intelligence are not so much like the tip of the iceberg being 10% of the whole; more like thinking the Earth and its atmosphere are all there is to Space, compared to the immensely vast expanse of the universe we watch in the night sky. Your intelligence – our intelligence – is enormously broad, deep and complex.

We can take no credit for it, of course. And there’s not even much sense in being grateful for it… it just is what it is. But let’s not diminish what it is.

Because really, that’s the true lack of intelligence – when we compare two children in the same school class, for example, and declare one to be “bright” and the other “dull”. This, to me, is the real lack of intelligence we confront today – this comparing of brilliant beings that diminishes us all. So where exactly are we going wrong with it, in my opinion?

It is as if we were to compare the brightness of a distant star with our Sun, and declare, based on our (correct) observation that the light of our Sun outshines all the other stars during the daytime, that the Sun “is brighter” than that other star. Some stars have luminosities of 100,000 times that of the sun. A star’s “apparent brightness”, however, depends on distance. We can easily see, can’t we, that we are making the wrong inference because of our particular perspective – we are so close to the Sun, relatively, that we cannot judge its brightness correctly.

And so too, when I look at a child, any “average” child, or any person in fact, I feel like I am looking into the Sun. I look at them and I feel their immensely powerful intelligence just pouring out of them.

When I look at you, yes YOU, I feel your radiating intelligence – you burn fiercely, in ways that are immeasurable.

So don’t you DARE call yourself, or anyone else, unintelligent. Even a person – it may be you, it may be me – who experiences very profound learning difficulties compared to some other people, somebody who really struggles with various disorders or unusual challenges, somebody who at first glance may appear to be severely disabled, unable perhaps to do some things that we consider fairly basic, like seeing, hearing, having sufficient control of their limbs to be able to write with a pencil or catch a ball, or being able to communicate with verbal speech. Such a person, whom we might be inclined to pity or to write off – such a person is no less than a deeply, impressively, intelligent human being. Did you know, for example, that some blind people have taught themselves to echo-locate? Or that some people who don’t use verbal speech invent alternative languages using other means than the lips and tongue? Never, ever, write a person off as incapable, just because their methods are surprising, invisible or unintelligible to you.

So, be as intelligent as you really are, in this way: STOP COMPARING.

Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop comparing others to you. Stop being inordinately impressed by over-achieving historical figures, or by those who succeed within the narrow, artificial parameters of the standardised academic system. Stop believing that it matters whether a person got an A* or an F on their maths GCSE, or passed Grade 8 violin at age 7.

Remember, these variations are but drops in a vast ocean of potential. They mean NOTHING.

Why is this so important, in my view? Because we are wasting our most valuable resource, and we are destroying our most beautiful resource, when we make people feel less capable than they really are because we keep telling them – and telling ourselves – “oh, they are not as clever as that other person, they probably can’t achieve much,” or we say to ourselves, just below our consciousness, “I am not as smart as that other person, so I probably can’t contribute very much.”

NO!

Contribute. Let your light develop and shine. Bring your whole amazing, mind-blowing intelligence to the table. Try to recognise it. Find out more about it. Your mind and your body together form a truly amazing living organism. You are perfectly adapted to your environment, to life on planet Earth, and you are able to adapt further as circumstances change. That is why I say you are intelligent, no matter what grades you got at school.

When you don’t believe in yourself, and you tell yourself not to bother, it is like you are telling the North Star not to bother shining anymore because the Sun is so much brighter than it. That is idiotic. You are too close to judge. You have no distance, no perspective. Any distant star may well be small and relatively dull, but it may have its own planets teeming with intelligent life around it.

Did you know that the atoms in your body have passed through several stars? Or that several billion of them were in all likelihood part of the body-mind that made up Shakespeare – and by extension, similarly with every other “genius” you might have read about? So don’t tell me you are in any way able to judge how intelligent you are. You have no idea. I have no idea either – I just know it’s colossal. It dwarfs the tiny differences between individual persons. It’s not the same ballpark. It’s not even the same city… it’s not even the same galaxy.

Your intelligence is VAST.

So stop underestimating yourself. Don’t set artificial limits on what you think you can contribute.

Now, if you don’t want to contribute, that’s a different thing. I can’t help you there. And I probably don’t want you in my vicinity – although I do know that people can change for the better, and often do. I can’t help you if you don’t want to contribute to the common good in some way – that’s your choice. But if you want to contribute, I can help you to believe in yourself, and to unlock and develop your latent capabilities.

You don’t even have to believe me. Just try to suspend your disbelief, temporarily. If you’ve read this far, you’ve already started rewiring your brain in the right direction.

I certainly don’t want you to follow me. I’m not a leader, a role model or a good example. I’m just a person who was lucky to have people believing in me around me in my life, and plentiful opportunities for self-development. I know what that can do for a person, and I wish to share it with others.

I’m just a person who looks into your eyes and sees the Sun.

I know that you are amazing. Stellar. Oceanic. (If this level of praise makes you feel uncomfortable, don’t worry, it doesn’t actually make you special. I have always seen people this way, even as a child, from my earliest memories. Remember, I think a hamster is incredibly clever too. And don’t even get me started on trees.)

Advice to my kids:
1. Don’t believe what anyone says about who or what you are. Including yourself.
2. Learn to observe when it’s happening – the gold stars, the “good girl”s, the “you always liked…”, the “buy our product to appear more successful, lovable, welcome”.
3. Understand that even if well-intentioned, these are manipulations. The person desires a response. Understand that what they are saying says far more about them and their desires, than about you.
4. In this way you will be freeing yourself from the clutches of advertising, the power of devious or neurotic people, and the inner pain of self-judgement.
5. One exception: mummy knows you and knows what’s best for you! ;D

Sit under a tree looking up
Observe the spaces between the leaves and branches
Observe the slices of silence between the sounds
Pay attention
Listen for the energy you bring into this scene

Feel your feet where they touch the ground
And any other part of your body that is resting on something, your arm on your thigh perhaps
Your head, balanced on your neck, or hanging forward from your shoulders
Like canvas on a frame

Observe the velocities of people, and clouds, the gathering mist
How leaves shake with distinct rhythms on a chestnut or
A poplar
The Zitterpappel shivers

A single golden hair from my daughter’s soft head
Hanging on the edge of the shoulder of my shrug
Flickering
Reminds me of the excitement of small children
As sunshine sieves through leaves
Cold air descending

Come and sit with me, under this tree
Imagine this fertile void
Create an empty space
Take your time

It’s been about four and a half years since I ventured down the rabbit hole. Haven’t quite reached the bottom yet, but starting to get a sense of the spaces I’m moving through. There’s a loosening, an unfolding. One day perhaps I’ll emerge with some kind of a map of the warren.

Deepest thanks to the many people who don’t know that they’ve helped me grope my way through this darkness. Reading about and listening to their/your experiences has been like coming across an arrow or a friendly note scribbled on the tunnel wall: “Hello stranger. Funny place you’re in right now. Well I’ve been here too, and I found a way out. Your way out may not be the same way as mine; getting out may not even be the answer. But know that I was here and I got out, and that’s what matters, and I came back to write this note for those yet to pass through here. “If it helps, when it’s so dark you can’t even see the walls or whether the floor drops away to nothing right in front of you, remember that you are not the only one here. Although you cannot see their faces or hear their breathing, these tunnels are full of people searching for light and rest and life, just like you are. And in these tunnels are also people who’ve come back in to help guide others out, as they once were guided by a quiet stranger who asked for no thanks.”

3. Repeat until something starts pulling itself out of possibility and into reality. Hold the reins, now gently, now tight. As the thing pulls, let it pull.

4. When the pull builds to a force, when the force disturbs the air around it and attracts others, when others start running over and offering help, when children chase after it clapping and laughing, that’s the time to let it go, lay the logs in front of it and roll it down the hill, chase after it too, shouting as you go.

—–

Stage 2 can take a very long time, even while you’re iterating fast, lean-style. It feels like endless failure, like being punched in the face a thousand times. It’s incredibly lonely. Sharing is hard, when most of what you’re sharing is not good enough, yet. But share you must, as sharing is nurture for the idea and for yourself. Holding on at Stage 3 is incredibly hard too, after all that time waiting. But it’s important to wait, to hold, to let the thing fill out, take its true shape and build its own momentum.

Award-winning writer Arundhati Roy’s most famous quotation is also one of the most beautiful and powerful statements of our time:

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

I like to pair it with one from another of my heroes, Buckminster Fuller:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Is it a coincidence that both trained as architects? Coincidence or not, it makes perfect sense. Whilst young and naïve, future architects look at the world around them, and the way people interact with each other and with artefacts in physical space, and say to themselves: “Another world is possible. I will build it.”

More than that, the profession – the vocation – of architecture demands collaboration and holistic thinking. It demands that we remain artists – creative, curious, challenging – whilst using existing technologies, engineering, science, economics and politics, as our tools. “I will build it” becomes “I will help build it, we will build it together”.

Here at Intelligent Futures, we are architects and engineers. We are unashamedly – perhaps naïvely or even arrogantly – committed to building a brave new world. One which we hope will owe more to Arundhati Roy’s vision than Aldous Huxley’s. Huxley warned us of techno-dystopia, as George Orwell did in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both, I am sure, did so in order to help us focus on building a different new world. Perhaps not a techno-utopia, but something better than we have now, or than we will have if we fling up our hands and proclaim the search for progress futile.

If we wish to have a less dystopian future, we must build it together. When we see the people working around us in innovation projects – as showcased on our website and at our events – we can hear the new world breathing.